INTRODUCTION Development of tin (IV) oxide based catalyst for carbon monoxide emission control.

ISSN: 2180-1053 Vol. 1 No. 1 July-December 2009 Development of Tin IV Oxide Based Catalyst fo Carbon Monoxide Emission Control 15 DEVELOPMENT OF TIN IV OXIDE BASED CATALYST FOR CARBON MONOXIDE EMISSION CONTROL Imran Syakir Mohamad 1 , Mohd Haizal Mohd Husin 1 , Safarudin Gazali Herawan 1 , Muhamad Zahir bin Hassan 1 , Mohd. Ridzuan Nordin 2 , Wan Azelee Wan Abu Bakar 3 , Nor Aziah Buang 3 , Abdul Rahim Yacob 3 1 Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Locked Bag 1752, Pejabat Pos Durian Tunggal, 76109 Durian Tunggal, Melaka, Malaysia. 2 Centre for Graduate Studies, Universiti Malaysia Pahang, Lebuhraya Tun Razak, 26300 Kuantan, Pahang, Malaysia. 3 Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Skudai, Johor Darul Takzim, Malaysia. ABSTRACT Tin IV oxide has been recognized as an alternative catalyst for carbon monoxide gas treatment generated from vehicular and industrial activities. Carbon monoxide is a poisonous gas produce from incomplete burning of hydrocarbon based fuel and emited directly from vehicles tailpipes which can afect human health. In this research, tin IV oxide was used as a catalyst with the addition of cobalt II oxide and nickel II oxide as dopants, prepared by modiication of sol-gel method. The catalytic ability was tested towards the oxidation of carbon monoxide using Continuous Fixed Bed Reactor SELOX instrument. Two catalysts, ECAT1-400 calcined at 400°C and ECAT2-600 calcined at 600°C gave a promising catalytic ability towards carbon monoxide oxidation. Both catalysts completed the carbon monoxide oxidation to carbon dioxide at 215°C and 200°C commercial catalyst, Pt Al 2 O 3 at 200°C. Several techniques were used in this research to characterize the physical and chemical properties of the catalyst materials. The nitrogen adsorption analysis reveals that the best prepared catalyst, ECAT2-600 is in form of mesopore, open cylindrical in shaped with pore diameter of 10nm. The x-ray difraction analysis shows the presence of SnO 2 tetragonal and Co 3 O 4 cubic phase which act as the active site in the catalytic oxidation. The existence of cobalt oxide in a mixture of Co 2+ and Co 3+ expected to contribute the excellent oxidation of carbon monoxide. KEYWORDS: catalyst, carbon monoxide oxidation

1.0 INTRODUCTION

The enormous increases in the environmental pollution are cause by exhaust emission which comes from incomplete vehicle combustion engine. A toxic carbon monoxide CO gas has being recognized as the main pollutant Surachai et.al., 2006. Incomplete combustion occurs at low air to fuel ratios in the vehicle engine mainly during starting engine when air supply is limited. Over the past several years, the introduction of a catalytic converter was a breakthrough in the reduction of pollutant emission all over ISSN: 2180-1053 Vol. 1 No. 1 July-December 2009 Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Technology 16 the world Martyn et.al.,2007. The use of catalysts will deinitely contribute to the production of clean automobile exhaust Martyn et.al.,2007, James et.al., 2005. Platinum group catalyst currently represents the state of the art in the emission control catalyst technology. However, these current catalysts are limited and very expensive. Also, the ‘light of temperature’ of these catalysts is still high before they can start to treat the exhaust gas pollutants. One way to overcome this problem is to seek viable alternative materials for catalytic converter usage Kaspar et.al., 2003. Currently, the development of non-noble metal oxide exhaust emission catalyst is on demand due to low price, strategic importance and high availability. The catalytic activity of these catalysts also can be improved by mixing with another oxide element. In this research, we develop a non noble metal oxide based catalyst with high eiciency of catalytic activity performance as an alternative catalyst for carbon monoxide treatment emited from vehicle emission. In this paper, our catalysts were prepared from tin IV oxide based meanwhile cobalt II oxide and nickel II oxide used as dopants. Two catalysts showed excellent carbon monoxide conversion as good as the commercial catalyst, PtAl 2 O 3 . Samples NiIICoII-doped SnO 2 ECAT1-400 calcined at 400°C and NiIICoII-doped SnO 2 ECAT2-600 calcined at 600°C gave a complete carbon monoxide oxidation T 100 at 215°C and 200°C, respectively.

2.0 EXPERIMENTAL